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Styling on Shoes

I am thankful I’ve achieved one of my life goals! I got Keds! All the snooty kids wore Keds when I was in school. Since there were five of us to shoe, Mother showed no interest in putting us on our path to snootiness. When the guy at the shoe repair shop gave her notice that shoes were beyond repair, she’d bring home a new pair, sized by the pencilled imprint of the lucky kid’s foot. She always went prepared, just in case. We were a one-car family and there was no possibility of a special trip just for shoes. We were whatever she brought home. There was no chance we could claim ugly shoes didn’t fit. She knew what she was doing.

Sometimes, one of us tripped Mother up by having a major shoe malfunction resultingin shoe acquisition that couldn’t be put off till Thursday, Daddy’s payday and her scheduled trip to town, in that miserable situation. On more the one occasion, she made a panicky trip to the dry goods store in Cottage Valley and bought the only shoes available. We hated these crummy sneakers, or “Tennies” as we called them, the ugly, red-headed stepchildren of Keds.

Girls got a style somewhat reminscent of Keds, usually white, wide in the arch, just right for duck feet. Bill got hightop, black basketball shoes with a white basketball on the ankle. Naturally, we had to wear theses lovelies till they fell apart. Mine were always dirty by the time I got to school, even if I were lucky enough they’d just been washed, and frankly, they weren’t washed that often.

My brother Billy got off the bus in one shoe after school one afternoon. Mother exploded. “Boy, where’s your shoe?”

He wasted some time trying to explain and she wasted more trying to make sense of the story. Finally, she got down to business and hauled him back to school to retrieve it from deep in a mass of brush on the wrong side of a hurricane fence. Undoubtedly, he’d pushed it deeper in his rescue attempts. Eventually, they showed up at home victorious except for scratches on her forearms and a tick or two.

Boy, can I relate to this post!! No sneakers, for us, though. We were bought some ugly shoes that were “made well”, but not exactly what was popular and in style and then we didn’t get them until a month AFTER school started and had to start school in our old shoes….oh well…your ending was great. Loved it. Great post, Beth. 😉

We had to get well-made ones when Mother could manage it for fall and winter. Sometimes got shoes for Chrismas. Saddle oxfords and leather shoes with plenty of room to go. Closer to summer, if we had to have new ones, we got tennis. We never had more than one pair. Flip flops in summer.

I love your new shoes Linda! When I was a kid we had to wear clumpy, ugly ‘sensible’ shoes. I remember one pair I had with two straps across the foot with buckles on, which were particularly hideous, especially as on both shoes the buckles went the same way, so one did up on the outside and one on the inside!

My older cousin got busted by shoe loss back in the early ’60s. She was riding around in cars with boys and kicked a shoe out at the gas station. The gas station gave it to her dad with a tale what she’d been up to. Boy was she in trouble.

Sounds familiar. We had to wear brown oxfords. Part of the uniform of St. Mary’s. Those damn shoes never wore out no matter how many square corners we made. They were so strong my mom could pass them down, ugh. After school we wore the same sneakers as you. :o)